


Waiting All My Life(the light in the darkness remix)

by tifaching



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Apocalypse, F/M, Het, POV Outsider, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-21 21:46:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1565171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tifaching/pseuds/tifaching
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamie's been waiting all her life for Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting All My Life(the light in the darkness remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Desolation Angels](https://archiveofourown.org/works/455017) by [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/pseuds/theladyscribe). 
  * Inspired by [Desolation Angels](https://archiveofourown.org/works/455017) by [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/pseuds/theladyscribe). 
  * Inspired by [Desolation Angels](https://archiveofourown.org/works/455017) by [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/pseuds/theladyscribe). 
  * Inspired by [Desolation Angels](https://archiveofourown.org/works/455017) by [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/pseuds/theladyscribe). 



> Thank you so much to theladyscribe for having such wonderful stories to choose from. Desolation Angels caught me from the get go. I hope you enjoy!

Jamie scoots under the covers and bends her legs to make a tent with her feet, heavy woolen socks keeping them toasty warm against the chill of Oklahoma winter. Once she’s burrowed far enough that the bedding over her head is blocking out all the light she slides her socked feet against the sheet, static sparks shooting through the dark until they imprint on the backs of her eyelids. She keeps her feet moving, squeezes her eyes tightly shut until the sparks are multi-colored meteors zipping into her brain. She doesn’t need to see the new energy her motion creates; she can feel it charging the air, seeping through her skin. It’s only a few minutes before momma calls from the next room for her to get to sleep and her feet drop with a soft thump. Momma’s not the one who knew she wasn’t sleeping, but Daddy always makes her be the bad guy. She pops her head out into the fresh, cool air and breathes in rhythm with the familiar muted thrumming in her bones until sleep overtakes her. Only once during the night does she stir as a rumbling growl disturbs her dreams but she’s alone in her room and the street outside is silent so she rolls over and falls immediately back to sleep.

The next morning after breakfast Momma brushes Jamie’s hair until it crackles then twists it into braids that trail halfway down her back. Daddy left earlier, probably while it was still dark. Momma says he’s ‘between jobs’ right now and doesn’t have anywhere really to be, but there are things he needs to take care of; paths that need to be set. There’s more to it than that, Jamie can tell, but he’s rarely there when she leaves for school. Momma’s face is pale and hard with secrets. Wherever Daddy’s gone, she’s not happy about it. Jamie wraps her arms around her mother’s waist and hugs her hard, letting some of her light flow into the dark places around Momma’s heart. 

“You know you’re not supposed to do that, baby girl,” Momma says, trying to look disapproving. Jamie smiles because her mother looks more relaxed and that’s all that matters.

“It’s just you, Momma,” she says as she grabs her lunch box and heads for the door. 

Momma says, “You be careful out there,” like she does every morning and Jamie hears it every way her mother means it.

“I will,” she replies. And she is.

*

They leave Tulsa in the middle of the night, what belongings they’d been able to snatch in their hurry tossed haphazardly into the back of Momma’s station wagon. “Run out of town on a rail,” Momma mutters, fury blazing on her face whenever they pass under an infrequent streetlight. “If your father was here…” She trails off but when they take their next screeching turn Jamie’s afraid the steering wheel is going to come right off and fly through the wind shield. Daddy’s not here, he’s been gone for weeks and Momma’s right. If he’d been home no one would have dared come after them. 

“I’m sorry, Momma,” Jamie whispers, sliding across the seat toward her mother, then scooting back when the older woman shrugs her away. It’s okay. She’s eleven now. Too old to be crawling to her momma for comfort. Too old to have made such a stupid mistake.

“Ain’t nobody perfect,” Momma says through tightly clenched teeth. She lights a cigarette, takes a few sharp puffs and throws it out the window. Her grip relaxes on the steering wheel and her foot eases up a fraction on the gas but Jamie doesn’t lose the lump of iron that’s been clogging her throat.

“What’s wrong with me?” Jamie’s voice quivers but she’s not going to cry. “Why am I like this?”

“Nothing’s wrong with you.” Momma snaps out. “And you’re the way you are because that’s how your daddy and me made you.”

“You made me different?”

“We made you special.” Momma takes a deep breath and lets it out again. “Everybody’s different, baby. Your friend Kara has red hair and freckles because that’s how her folks made her. Grant who lives…lived…down the street got buck teeth and a bum heart. You’ve got a gift, Jamie. A knack. Yours is a little different from most folks but everybody’s got one.”

“A knack?”

“Some people can spend five minutes with an engine that won’t start and get it up and running. Some people can take colors and a brush and make a piece of canvas look so lifelike that you’d swear the picture was real. You got a spark inside you that you want to share with the world. And it’s not a bad thing, don’t ever think that. It’s something that people will find darned comforting in dark times.”

“Pretty dark right now,” Jamie mutters. The moon is hidden behind thick clouds and the pitch black night seems to push back against the bright beams of the headlights.

“Oh, honey,” Momma says with a chuckle that makes Jamie shiver. “This is nothing.”

Eventually, Jamie crawls into the back seat and wraps herself in a sleeping bag. The car’s motion rocks her to sleep and tonight the roaring growl that’s been the soundtrack to her dreams for as long as she can remember has a visual to accompany it: a car, glistening black in brilliant sunshine.

*

She only goes back to Oklahoma once, for a week of sun and cows and stretching her muscles loading hay bales onto the trailer behind Grampa’s tractor. It’s far enough from Tulsa that no one should know her, but Grampa tells folks she’s a vo-ag student visiting from Indianapolis and there’s no reason to doubt it.

Harry Cummings from the next farm over comes by with his boy Sean to help out, since one old man and a fifteen year old girl aren’t going to get the hay in by themselves in seven days. Sean makes eyes at Jamie and she gives him the once over right back and the night before she leaves dust kicks up on the track to Grampa’s farm as he comes to pick her up for a party. Jamie runs to the porch when she hears the roar of his approach but even before she sees the red pickup she knows it’s not the car from her dreams. That engine’s song has been her lullaby for too long to ever confuse it with anything else.

She doesn’t like beer, she quickly discovers, but wine coolers and hard lemonades go down easy. Sean’s got blankets piled thick in the bed of his truck and when the bonfire starts her blood simmering she slips away to settle down there. It’s a clear night, the kind where you can see all the way to heaven and she counts three shooting stars before the truck bed shudders and Sean drops down next to her.

“Did you make a wish?” he asks, folding a blanket into a long pillow to rest their heads on.

“Made three,” she says with a little shrug. “Don’t know why I bother, they never come true.”

“Maybe you’ve just got to be patient,” he says and then they’re silent, staring at the skies as the thump of music from the party shivers through the night air.

Patience has always been one of Jamie’s virtues but tonight she’s restless, twitchy with anticipation. Sean’s comfortably stretched out beside her and Jamie waits for him to kiss her, to touch her, to ask her if she wants to have sex. Because she’ll say yes and at least one of her wishes will come true. But Sean doesn’t kiss her, doesn’t touch her, doesn’t ask. He breathes, deep and slow, and she only can tell he’s still awake by the glitter of his eyes. Eventually, she gets tired of waiting. Nothing in the rulebook says the girl can’t make the first move but before she even gets a word out another bright light rockets across the sky and Sean’s hand shoots up to point.

“Did you see that?”

“Course I did,” Jamie says a little sourly. “Should I make another wish?”

If Sean notices her sarcasm, he ignores it. “Look,” he says, and she follows the point of his finger. “It went right through the Big Dipper.”

Turns out Sean knows everything about every star in existence and he wants to share that kind of knowing with Jamie. It’s actually kind of okay because Jamie can’t really see the stars back home in Indianapolis and the stories Sean tells her about constellations and myths hold her rapt until the late hour and the alcohol and the week of slinging hay bales take their toll. She nods off to Sean’s voice saying something about a bear.

Jamie’s ears strain, even in sleep, for the familiar growl of the beast that travels the highway of her unconscious every night. It’s not there, the first time since forever that it hasn’t provided the backdrop to her slumber. She’s about to panic, thrash herself awake, when another sound approaches, volume increasing with every second that passes. The drumbeat thuds behind her eyelids as electric guitars crescendo and voices rise in complex, intertwining harmonies. The car comes into view and the dream narrows and focuses and the overwhelming expectation of the night is finally realized as Jamie catches her first sight of the driver. Well, part of him anyway. All she can see is the steering wheel and the hands gripping it. They’re strong hands, rough and used to hard work, a patchwork of fresh scabs decorating the knuckles. They cradle the wheel like it’s a cherished loved one and a silver ring taps the white leather in rhythm with the music. When she wakes, Sean tells her she was humming in her sleep. His eyes are wide and he’s skittish, like he doesn’t want to touch her, so she’s pretty sure humming isn’t all she was doing.

When he drives her home she doesn’t slide up next to him and he doesn’t put his arm around her shoulders. He tells her he’s headed to OU in the fall on a full scholarship and she understands then why nothing happened. She’s young but she’s seen her share of paths derailed by carelessness. He didn’t have to worry. She’d had the talk at school long ago and Momma had given her another one shortly after. She knows what her body is capable of and a baby isn’t trapping her anywhere either. She gives him a kiss on the cheek before she gets out though, because of what might have been.

She watches him drive away, her pale skin aglow under the light of uncounted stars. The heat of the bonfire has faded and one of her wishes came true tonight even if it wasn’t the one she expected. “It’s okay,” she whispers as the taillights fade from view. “I got dreams of my own.”

*

Jamie wakes up on May 2nd to an empty house, Momma’s gone and Daddy’s never home to start with. The street is empty, cars abandoned with the engines still running and the Peterson’s dog is barking at the end of its tether; deep, booming, frantic yelps. Jamie takes a step towards it, the only other living thing she sees and freezes in her tracks when it bares its teeth, barks descending to a threatening growl. Daddy gave her a knife when she turned nineteen last summer, but she doesn’t carry it with her. It’s sitting on the shelf in her room like it always is because she thought she’d be walking out into a regular, boring day. Retreating slowly, she goes back inside and emerges with the weapon unsheathed in her hand. The next block is empty as is the block after that. Her cell phone doesn’t have a signal. And there’s no one anywhere. Her palm’s sweating around the knife. It’s going to be completely useless if a horde of zombies shambles around the corner or aliens drop from the sky though if she’s not the only person left on earth it might do some good against a real live human. But she walks the sidewalks of Indianapolis until darkness falls and never sees another soul.

The power goes off three days later. Jamie’s sitting on the porch, arms wrapped around her knees, when the street lamps flare and blink out. Mosquitoes are buzzing around her head but she ignores them and stays outside, staring into the dark. Her eyes scan the night, searching vainly for the bob of a flashlight or the flare of a match. She’s tired, worn out and dim and a few hours before dawn she stumbles upstairs to her room. The bed’s not made, without Momma to get on her case about it she hasn’t bothered, and she slides between the sheets with a burst of static that doesn’t delight her the way it used to. With a quivering sigh she reaches for the lamp on the bedside table and the bulb glows as her hand touches it. It’s the only concrete thing her gift is good for; Momma hadn’t had a utility bill in over a decade. She gives it a boost, just enough to keep it on ‘til dawn and rolls over to get some sleep. She hadn’t dared to do it the first few nights but now she’s tired of the darkness. If something out there is attracted to light it won’t take a table lamp for it to find her.

She wakes late the next morning with sunlight streaming through the window. It’s quiet outside, even the dog has stopped barking. Jamie wonders if there’s a single robin somewhere, wondering where all the other robins have gone. A lone goose floating alone on the surface of a huge lake, searching for the rest of its flock. She might be the last person on earth and she might not, but sitting here wondering about it isn’t going to get her any answers. Last night in her dream she saw roads and fields and abandoned cars and nothing about it was familiar. The car and its mysterious driver might be real or they might be just wishful thinking but she’s not going to find out if she stays here. Her cell phone is on the table and she laughs at how simple it would have been just a few days ago to figure out where she’s going and to plan an itinerary. She packs light. All the people are gone but their belongings aren’t. She’ll just take what she needs as she goes along. Her toothbrush and hairbrush go into the side pouch of her knapsack. A few changes of clothes and a picture of her with Momma and Daddy go into the pack itself. In the kitchen she grabs a few bottles of water and a box of granola bars. The knife fits neatly in her back pocket. There’s a pack of hotdogs and a few handfuls of hamburger left in the fridge and Jamie takes them next door and tosses them on the ground. Everything’s going to spoil in a few days anyway without her there to keep things running. The dog lays there, unmoving, and lets Jamie unhook its chain before crawling forward on its belly to scarf down the meat. She goes back into the house to grab her knapsack and when she comes out the dog is gone.

The road atlas from the back of Momma’s car would be more useful if she knew where she was actually going but she picks a direction and a route and a town to head for and hits the road. It turns out she’s not the last person on Earth but she doesn’t meet many and those she does run into are finished even though they’re still standing. They stay behind, huddled in familiar surroundings but Jamie moves on. She hasn’t found what she’s looking for and she won’t stop until she does.

*

She’s been walking for days, heading vaguely south, crashing in a different house every night. Momma always kept her close after Tulsa and Jamie hadn’t argued. It’s strange now to see how other people lived. Messy or neat, fine china or plastic bowls, guitars or guns propped in a corner. She wanders roadside attractions and museums and craft boutiques. She’s broadening her horizons, she guesses. Gaining knowledge even though there’s nobody to share it with. Now that it’s safe, she thinks maybe Momma would be proud.

The road all blends together after a while and Jamie almost walks right past the bit she’s been looking for. She’s about to round the corner, out of sight, when something registers and she turns around, taking in the stretch of pavement that’s been featured in her dreams dozens of times. Her breath punches out in a strangled, panicked gasp at how close she’d come to missing it. A field stretches beside her, furrows still visible where corn was going to go in. A few cars and a van complete the picture. Jamie sits down in the dust right where she is and rocks back and forth, grinning. If this is real the car must be real too. The driver must be real. And they’ll be by here, Jamie knows it. The thought that maybe she’s too late crosses her mind and she bats it away. They’ll be by here and that’s all there is to it.

They come in the daytime in the dream so that’s when Jamie stakes this place out. She throws a blanket on top of the van and settles down to wait, soaking up the sun’s rays and listening for the roar of an engine but for days all she hears is the wind. She’s got a place nearby, heads there every night at dusk. The stove’s electric and she heats cans of stew and vegetables for her supper. After dark all the lights blaze in case the dream fools her and he comes when she’s not there to meet him. If nothing else, he’ll see the lights and check them out. But night after night passes and she’s still alone.

Sitting still grates on her. The itch to move, to get back on the road, grows. Every day she brings her knapsack with her, just in case, and every night she brings it back home. Home. No. That’s not what this place is. She’s not going to let it be permanent. She gives him one more week before she heads out again. Then another. She’s halfway through the third when her ears pick up the sound of an engine on the wind.

The car slows, then stops when Jamie sits up on top of the van and she breathes a tiny sigh of relief because, in spite of everything, she hadn’t been positive that it would. She’s got the knife in her hand. It doesn’t hurt to be careful and when he gets out of the car it doesn’t seem to bother him. Jamie tries not to stare but she can’t help it. He’s tall and built and would be gorgeous if not for the misery in his eyes. She doesn’t need help and he’s not looking for a place to stay and once that conversation is out of the way Jamie asks if he’ll take her with him when he goes. He looks tough and capable and maybe he sees the same in her because he nods and she climbs in.

She tells him her name is Jamie and she’s from Tulsa, Oklahoma originally, but her parents moved to Indianapolis when she was eleven and she’s not been to the Midwest since. It’s mostly true, minus the trip to Grampa’s farm. She doesn’t tell him about the dreams or her light. Lies of omission are bull in her book.

”You shouldn’t get into cars with strangers,” he says and she grins.

”Who else is left?”

He huffs a little half smile and nods.

What’s your name?” she asks when none is forthcoming. “It’s hard to not be strangers if I don’t know your name.”

”Dean,” he whispers, like someone will overhear and come swooping down on him.

”That’s cool,” she says. “My Momma loved James Dean. Is that who you’re named after?”

“I don’t know,” he replies with a real smile. “Maybe.”

*

Jamie’s careful not to turn the lights on everywhere they stop for the night, but it happens enough in the places she wants to stay that Dean starts to let her choose. Sometimes she flips a switch and a chandelier over a mahogany dining set comes aglow and sometimes it’s the bedside lamp in a crappy motel. She’s not afraid of the night and Dean moves through it like he’s never lived anywhere else, but her Momma was right all those years ago. Light can be a comfort in dark times.

Dean talks in his sleep, cries sometimes, screams sometimes. Jamie tries not to sleep at night. Ever since Tulsa, when she’d snuck out to go next door to her friend Tasha’s sleep over, she doesn’t sleep around other people. Dean doesn’t seem like a religious fanatic who’d accuse a little girl of being a demon because her skin tends to glow in the dark if she’s not careful, but that incident had proven that you can never tell about people. So when he calls out a name over and over, Jamie can’t help but hear it. Hears the pain and loss. Wonders who this Sam girl is who meant so much.

It’s not until they’ve been on the road for months, until she realizes she’s fallen in love, that she asks him. He doesn’t answer, just clams up tight and turns up the volume on the cassette player until the car is shaking with it. He’s shaking too, but Jamie doesn’t reach out for him. They don’t talk about the past and there’s a reason for that. She’s just overstepped her bounds big time.

He tells her anyway, late at night a few days later and she wishes she’d never asked. Sam’s not some old girlfriend, Sam was his brother. Murdered on the day the world ended by the things that ended it. Dark things. Evil things. _Different_ things, hiding inside humans. Jamie goes cold on the other bed. He says he could have stopped it if he’d been better, faster, there for Sam when he was needed to be and all Jamie can see when she looks at him is a dark hole that’s ready to swallow him up. She moves without thinking that he might see _her_ as one of those different things and slides into bed next to him. Momma got like this sometimes when Daddy was off doing god knows what and Jamie had been scared of the darkness inside her, scared that Momma would go and leave her all alone. That fear is terror now because if Dean falls into the dark the last person she loves will be gone and her fear of him finding out what she can do pales next to that. He rolls away from her, up and out of the bed before she can share even the tiniest bit of light. Jamie curls up in sheets still warm from his body, buries her face in his pillow to breathe in his scent. She falls asleep in spite of herself and if her skin gives off the faintest glow he’s not there to see it.

She jerks from sleep the next morning, the room bright with sun, and looks around wildly. He’s there, on the other bed, eating breakfast.

”Come on,” he says and Jamie does.

*

Jamie doesn’t sleep at night, but she takes to sneaking catnaps in the Impala’s back seat, a blanket covering her from head to toe. Dean keeps the music low and she manages to get a little rest but mostly she frets that she’ll kick the blanket off, that he’ll pull it back to see if she’s o.k. and her power will manifest in some weird way. Momma said it hadn’t in years, not since she was little, that she’d learned to control it even in sleep, but Jamie can’t be sure. She can’t keep an eye on herself while she sleeps, so she doesn’t sleep. It’s as simple as that.

Dean’s worried about her, she can see it in the set of his shoulders and the way the creases deepen around his eyes but there’s nothing he can do to help except be someone other than he is. He takes them south, then east and the way he navigates every road they travel makes Jamie think that there’s nowhere he hasn’t already been. She asks and he allows that he hasn’t been everywhere, but he’s been a hell of a lot of places. He’s twenty-nine, Jamie knows, and he looks younger but a lot of miles have spun under his car’s tires and he’s just as tired as she is though he’s handling it better. She tells him she’s never seen the ocean and he nods and purses his lips.

”We can do that,” he says.

Maybe it will be good for both of them.

*

Jamie’s seen the ocean in movies and on T.V., but the real thing takes her breath away. She hadn’t thought it would help to be there, hadn’t thought anything would help, but the tang of the salt air and crash of waves on the sand relax her against her will. She begins to run every day on the beach, stretching her legs and using muscles cramped by long hours in the car. The sun bleaches her hair blonde and Dean finds a tube of sunscreen and orders her to use it. He’s already slathered in the stuff and Jamie laughs at the strip of white running down the center of his nose. She soaks up the sun until she’s ready to burst from it and dives into the waves at dusk, strong strokes taking her deep under the water where she can let it out in one big blast of light. Dean’s always waiting when she comes out, with a towel and a worried scowl. Those nights she sleeps like a baby knowing that she doesn’t have enough juice left to light a single cell, never mind her entire body.

There’s an orange tree a few backyards down and she picks the fresh fruit for breakfast, lunch and dinner. She cooks their food on a propane grill and gas lanterns light their way after dark. Her skin is browned by the sun so it comes as a shock to her to see that Dean is paler than when they arrived. He’s stopped eating, even the oranges don’t tempt him, and when Jamie lies awake in worry she sees that he’s not sleeping either. He won’t tell her what’s wrong and it isn’t until she thinks back on the time that she realizes that it’s the beginning of May. The world ended, his brother died, a year ago and he’s ready to follow along. Jamie’s not going to let that happen.

The next day she spreads a towel on the sand while he sits on the porch and stares into space. He told her what kind of horror story his life was before he met her and she’s got no idea what’s nightmare he’s seeing right now but she knows what she can do to help. She goes for a run then builds a sandcastle, calling in vain for him to come help. At the end of the day, when she lights up the ocean floor, she holds a little back. When she gets out he’s still on the porch, but he’s watching her and his eyes are tight with pain.

She waits five minutes after he gets into bed, then slides in next to him, wrapping her arms around him immediately so he can’t get away. She’s a little surprised when he doesn’t move, she knows that this isn’t how he sees them, but she counts her blessings while she can. One hand settles over his heart and the other low on his belly and she lets a tiny bit of light flow into him, just enough to beat the darkness back a little. She gets into bed with him every night, chips away at his hopelessness, and on the third night he finally falls asleep, head resting against hers. Four days later he eats the orange slices Jamie slips into his mouth and she murmurs, “Let’s get out of here.”

*

They break into a bar in Georgia and Dean teaches her to play pool. His body’s warm over hers as he guides her shots and a strong arm wraps around her waist to balance her. The place is still full of liquor and he mixes them drinks, jokes about being a bartender in another life. Jamie sips the one he hands her; it’s sweet and tangy and bright pink. It seems only seconds before she’s staring at an empty glass and she gets up and racks the balls again while he makes her another.

”Better slow down a little, kiddo,” he jokes, setting her drink down on the edge of the table. “Don’t want to get you drunk.”

”You should talk,” she says, hitting the cue ball. He can hold his liquor, she’s seen that enough times, but she’s got plans that alcohol can’t play any part in. “How about we just shoot pool and leave the drinking for another time?”

”Yes, ma’am,” he says with a raised eyebrow, carrying their drinks back to the bar. “You do know that you’re supposed to hit the other balls with the cue ball, right?”

Jamie lets him show her again and again and tries not to melt into the press of his body. She hits the cue into the other balls and if more of them rocket onto the floor than go in the holes, she’s learning. All too soon the corners of the room are falling into shadow and Dean lets out a quiet sigh.

”Guess we better be hitting the road.”

Jamie takes a deep breath and makes a decision. His eyes are tight again when just moments ago they’d been happy. He’s comfortable here, relaxed. This is a part of his old life that doesn’t flash him back to some horrible moment. “We don’t have to go,” she says.

Can’t play pool in the dark, sweetheart.”

Jamie’s heart does a slow double thump at the word, though she’s sure he doesn’t mean it. “Do you trust me?” she asks quietly, staring at him steadily as his shoulders tighten. He nods but doesn’t say anything and she smiles. “It’s okay. I trust you.” Dean’s mouth opens at that, but Jamie keeps right on going. “I trust that I’m not going to wake up in the morning to find you gone because you figured out what a liability I am. I’m not so certain that you won’t head for the hills when I tell you that I love you, because I do. But if you’re going to leave me for any reason, I think it will be because of this.” She lifts a hand and lights come on all over the bar, dispelling the late evening gloom. One step back takes her to the jukebox and with a touch ‘Born to Run’ is blaring through the room.

”What are you.” Dean’s eyes are hard but he doesn’t have a gun in his hand and Jamie will take that.

”Just a regular person as far as I know. Figure a guy with your expertise could find out for the both of us if I was anything else.

Dean’s expression falters for a moment and Jamie feels a moment of shock. “You already checked.” Her relief is overwhelming. “I’m guessing that if you found anything we wouldn’t both be here right now.”

”Regular people don’t do _this_.” Dean waves his arm at the lights.

” _Regular_ people can’t figure out what’s wrong with an engine by sound, take it apart and have it running like a top in half an hour like you can. I certainly can’t. _Regular_ people can’t write symphonies for dozens of instruments in their head like Mozart could. I can’t do that, can you?” Jamie’s walking toward him as she speaks and stops an arm’s length away. “I light up dark places, Dean. What could be bad about that?”

“How?”

”I don’t know. Momma always said it was a knack.”

"So every time we had lights…”

”And hot water,” Jamie continues for him. “And a stove to cook on.”

Dean nods but his voice is still sharp. “Anything else?”

Jamie’s not going to tell him about the dreams. He needed her and they brought her to him and that’s all there is to it. “My daddy was a pretty bad man,” she says, meeting his eyes squarely, “and sometimes, when my Momma was so lost in hurt that she couldn’t find her way out of the dark I’d share some of my light with her. I was so afraid that if I didn’t…. I wanted to do that with everyone, help them when they were hurting but Momma said it was dangerous, said they wouldn’t understand. So I never did, no matter how much it killed me not to. Until…”

Dean’s eyes narrow. “Until…?”

”Florida," Jamie says. "You were going to die there, weren’t you.”

Dean just nods, face shadowed even in the light.

”Do you wish you were dead now?” Jamie’s voice is shaking and a tear slips slowly down her face. “Or are you happy to be alive, even a little?”

Dean rubs a hand across his face and meets Jamie’s gaze. “I’m glad I’m not dead,” he says.

Jamies nods and takes a deep, snuffling breath. “You can leave now, if you want. I won’t blame you. Or you can tell me to go and I will. Or,” she takes a step forward and wraps her arms around his waist, “we can both stay.”

Dean doesn’t answer but he doesn’t pull away. This could be the end in a multitude of ways, but it could also be the beginning of everything. Jamie rests her head against his chest and waits like she’s waited for him her whole life.

Dean clears his throat and she can feel his muscles relax under her hands. “Have you ever been to New England?” he asks.

Jamie shakes her head without releasing her grip. Dean gently detangles them and steps back. His face is serious but not closed off, not angry.

”Come on, then,” he says, heading for the door and Jamie goes.


End file.
